The Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) will be contributing $452,147 to the Primate’s World Relief and Development Fund’s (PWRDF) maternal and child health work in Bangladesh.
The funding will be received over three years as part of the Muskoka Initiative on Maternal, Newborn and Child Health. “We are very pleased to continue our decades-long relationship with CIDA,” says Zaida Bastos, CIDA program coordinator for PWRDF.
The program will train 650 midwives who will work with 63,000 mothers and 94,500 children in 130 villages in Bangladesh. The midwives will provide education as well as pre- and post-natal care. “These villages currently do not have health clinics or trained health workers,” Bastos explains. “Trained midwives who can provide education about health issues as well as access to basic health care will help to save the lives of mothers and children in the villages.”
PWRDF will work with long-term partner UBINIG to implement this program. UBINIG is the Bangla acronym for Policy Research for Development Alternative, an advocacy organization responsible for setting up one of the biggest community seed banks in the world. Farida Akhtar, one of the founders, is a former member of PWRDF’s board of directors.
For more information, go to:
http://pwrdf.org/2011/pwrdf-receives-government-of-canada-funding-for-maternal-and-child-health-project-in-bangladesh/.
